One of the most celebrated novels of its time, the Pulitzer Prize winner A Summons to Memphis introduces the Carver family, natives of Nashville, residents, with the exception of Phillip, of Memphis, Tennessee.

During the twilight of a Sunday afternoon in March, New York book editor Phillip Carver receives an urgent phone call from each of his older, unmarried sisters. They plead with Phillip to help avert their widower father's impending remarriage to a younger woman. Hesitant to get embroiled in a family drama, he reluctantly agrees to go back south, only to discover the true motivation behing his sisters' concern. While there, Phillip is forced to confront his domineering siblings, a controlling patriarch, and flood of memories from this troubled past.

Peter Taylor is one of the masters of Southern literature, whose work stands in the company of Eudora Walty, James Agee, and Walker Percy. In A Summons to Memphis, he composed a richly evocative story of revenge, resolution, and redemption, and gave us a classic work of American literature.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

Peter Taylor is well-known as a masterful writer of short stories set in the old South; not the well-explored South of explosive passions, but an urban world of faded gentility and empty custom. In his almost Jamesian evocations of the mannered upper classes in his native Tennessee, he neither romanticizes nor reviles, but meticulously observes, revealing the patterns of social behavior that leave the individual at the mercy of a relentless past. In this, only the second novel of his long career and the winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Taylor weaves a rich social web in telling the story of one family's stark social decline, symbolized by a move from Nashville to Memphis, and of the consequences through the years and down the generations.

From the Inside Flap:

Winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. "American readers demand novels, and now Peter Taylor has given them one; to say that it is every bit as good as the best of his short stories is the highest compliment it can be paid." THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD When Phillip Carver receives, on a lonely Sunday evening, two successive telephone calls from his sisters, begging him to leave his home in Manhattan and return immediately to Memphis, he is slow to agree. His sisters, middle-aged and unmarried, want his help in averting the remarriage of their father, an elderly widower. And although Phillip wants no part in such manipulations, he finds himself unable to refuse to make the trip South...and into his own past.

Book Description Random House USA Inc, United States, 1999. Paperback. Book Condition: New. 1st Vintage International Ed. 202 x 130 mm. Language: English Brand New Book. One of the most celebrated novels of its time, the Pulitzer Prize winner A Summons to Memphis introduces the Carver family, natives of Nashville, residents, with the exception of Phillip, of Memphis, Tennessee. During the twilight of a Sunday afternoon in March, New York book editor Phillip Carver receives an urgent phone call from each of his older, unmarried sisters. They plead with Phillip to help avert their widower father s impending remarriage to a younger woman. Hesitant to get embroiled in a family drama, he reluctantly agrees to go back south, only to discover the true motivation behing his sisters concern. While there, Phillip is forced to confront his domineering siblings, a controlling patriarch, and flood of memories from this troubled past. Peter Taylor is one of the masters of Southern literature, whose work stands in the company of Eudora Walty, James Agee, and Walker Percy. In A Summons to Memphis, he composed a richly evocative story of revenge, resolution, and redemption, and gave us a classic work of American literature. Bookseller Inventory # AAC9780375701177

Book Description Random House USA Inc, United States, 1999. Paperback. Book Condition: New. 1st Vintage International Ed. 202 x 130 mm. Language: English Brand New Book. One of the most celebrated novels of its time, the Pulitzer Prize winner A Summons to Memphis introduces the Carver family, natives of Nashville, residents, with the exception of Phillip, of Memphis, Tennessee. During the twilight of a Sunday afternoon in March, New York book editor Phillip Carver receives an urgent phone call from each of his older, unmarried sisters. They plead with Phillip to help avert their widower father s impending remarriage to a younger woman. Hesitant to get embroiled in a family drama, he reluctantly agrees to go back south, only to discover the true motivation behing his sisters concern. While there, Phillip is forced to confront his domineering siblings, a controlling patriarch, and flood of memories from this troubled past. Peter Taylor is one of the masters of Southern literature, whose work stands in the company of Eudora Walty, James Agee, and Walker Percy. In A Summons to Memphis, he composed a richly evocative story of revenge, resolution, and redemption, and gave us a classic work of American literature. Bookseller Inventory # AAC9780375701177

Book Description Vintage, 1999. Book Condition: New. Brand New, Unread Copy in Perfect Condition. A+ Customer Service! Summary: "We finish the novel feeling we've not only come to know his characters, but also come to share their inner truths." --Michiko Kakutani,The New York Times "A beautiful ironic novel. Peter Taylor's fiction is full of rewards." --The New York Times Book Review "A Summons to Memphisis like a leisurely port wine sipped slowly and with pleasure beneath a blackjack oak." --The Philadelphia Inquirer "Something of a miracle. [A Summons to Memphis] is a work that manages to summarize and embody its author's entire career." --The Washington Post Book World. Bookseller Inventory # ABE_book_new_0375701176

Book Description Paperback. Book Condition: New. 1st. 132mm x 18mm x 204mm. Paperback. One of the most celebrated novels of its time, the Pulitzer Prize winner "A Summons to Memphis" introduces the Carver family, natives of Nashville, residents, with the exception .Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. 224 pages. 0.236. Bookseller Inventory # 9780375701177